Hello and welcome to the tenth edition of InTransit eq, the newsletter that will be “ e ”-mailed you on a “ q ”-uarterly basis. We try to include articles that appeal to our clients and/or our prospects and other friends in the industry. If there is something you'd like to read in future editions please provide feedback. Of course if you are not interested in being included in our circulation list, please unsubscribe where indicated right at the bottom of this email.

Nicola Williams
Managing Director

This year’s Transit User Group Meeting was reported to be “one of the best” by a fourth time attendee. The sessions included a detailed demonstration of all the new functionality Transit Odyssey 2.0 has to offer, training on some of the lesser-known advanced functionality, and the popular “Transit User Experience”.

The presenters for this year’s session included Georg Meisch, Goodman Fielder Baking’s National Distribution Manager. Georg’s team use Odyssey for optimising fixed runs and he shared best practice for implementing a large number of runs on a rolling national basis.

Georg highlighted the importance of calibrating the “action replay” and getting senior management’s buy-in.

There was also a new interactive session that proved to be a great success: users were asked to form teams and compete to produce the most efficient and cost effective schedules via Odyssey, using a set of data and operational constraints provided. One of the aims of the exercise was to show users how to work out the costs that operational constraints add to your business.

Last but not least, all delegates were given an opportunity to help prioritise our development activity over the next year. Our current plan was approved, which was to develop new time and distance grids using Sensis’ vector data, starting with Sydney. We will also incorporate peak-hour factoring and specified meal breaks within Odyssey as soon as possible.

Nicola Williams
Managing Director

I’m very pleased to announce the promotions of four of our staff: Scott Dowell has been promoted to Operations Manager; Samantha Ousley has been promoted to Client Support Manager/Consultant; Thuy Nguyen has been promoted to Client Support Officer; and Paul Hunter has been promoted to Technical Manager.

Scott and Paul’s positions became available after Damian Scott, our former Operations Director, left Transit recently. Damian joined primarily to design and manage the development of Odyssey, the fourth ground-up re-write of our Transit software. Now that the last of our clients is upgrading to Odyssey, Damian felt his ongoing contribution to Transit was limited.

Scott has taken over Damian’s development management responsibilities and maintains his previous responsibilities for account management and quality assurance.

Paul will continue to work on improving the scheduling engine, but is now also responsible for specifying the technical direction of all development activities.

Sam and Thuy’s promotions are a result of their passion for helping our clients get the most from their Transit investment and their enthusiasm for contributing as much as possible to our consulting projects. Sam has over four years of Transit client support experience and is well qualified for the next stage of her career at Transit.

I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Scott, Paul, Sam and Thuy for their great work and dedication to Transit. I love having you all on the Transit Team and look forward to working with you for many years to come!

Nicola Williams
Managing Director

The “Update service durations” macro is designed to allow the user to explicitly set the fixed and variable service time of selected order(s). If the order and the customer service times are blank, the default service times found in the Parameter editor are applied. However, if you wish to see the exact service time being applied to each order, or wish to apply these service times to a selected group of orders, use the macro.

To use, click the pencil button on the “Order Editor” screen, enter the fixed and variable times at the bottom of the screen, then click Apply. This will apply the service time to each order in the filtered grid. An example of the service time that will be applied can be seen at the top of the macro screen.

Can you schedule vehicles using my priorities?

Many of our clients have asked whether we are able to produce a schedule which favours certain vehicles, such as company vehicles that should be used in preference to sub-contractors, or a particular type of vehicle you would like to use in preference to others.

The scheduling system has been designed to handle user-assigned vehicle priorities, by allowing the user to assign a priority number to their vehicles - 1 being the highest priority vehicle and 9 being the lowest. Priorities are created in terms of groups of vehicles and set up with at least two or three vehicles in each group.

Although the scheduling system will follow the rules that you specify, it is always vital to assess the impact of using vehicle priorities on your schedule. In a recent example, a client request to prioritise company vehicles resulted in an increase in time and distance of over thirty percent: increased volumes meant that the company fleet was just too small to get the job done on its own.

If you remember the golden rule, and compare the prioritised results with your baseline before you decide whether to use this functionality, it can be a powerful tool for meeting operational requirements.